At the end of the year, the three major operators invariably released the december 2021 operating data, and it is a little regrettable that the three major operators did not achieve a perfect ending. China Mobile's cable broadband business, in particular, saw a net decline of 459,000 households in the month, showing negative growth for the first time in two years. There are even views that the "invincible golden body" China Mobile cable broadband service has been "broken"?
In the author's view, operators' monthly operating data has many accidental factors and is not representative; in the wired broadband service market, China Mobile is still the "bellwether" in the market. But user scale is no longer the KPI that China Mobile is currently pursuing. As Yang Jie, chairman of China Mobile, requested, it is necessary to deepen scale-based value management and build a new information service system.
After "laying the foundation", the next step is to do a good job in the value management of the stock market, and strive to improve the ARPU value and user experience. That is to say, Dong Xin, general manager of China Mobile, mentioned in the 2022 work report that it is necessary to accelerate the transformation and development of the company, "strengthen the stability of progress, adhere to the 'stock to protect the world, incremental win the future', and deepen the promotion of stable storage and expansion." ”
And it is. China Mobile's fixed network ARPU in the first half of this year was 36.1 yuan, an increase of 13.8% year-on-year, of which the home broadband ARPU was 41.1 yuan, an increase of 16% year-on-year, and the household market income in the first half of the year was 50 billion yuan, an increase of 33%. In addition to the significant growth in the number of users, the family value-added business represented by Mobaihe and mobile housekeepers also performed well.
Nine years of accumulation: sitting firmly on the Diaoyutai
At the end of 2013, while issuing 4G licenses, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also lifted restrictions on the operation of China Mobile's fixed services and allowed it to enter the wired broadband network market. As a result, China Mobile has embarked on a "counterattack" journey in the wired broadband market.
Under the "two-wheel drive" of huge network construction investment and aggressive marketing strategies, China Mobile's cable broadband business has soared. According to the data, the total number of China Mobile's cable broadband subscribers surpassed Unicom for the first time in October 2016; in October 2018, this number reached 146.819 million households, surpassing China Telecom's 143.84 million households and peaked; in mid-2019, China Mobile officially completed the full-caliber surpassing of China Telecom (some telecom users are not in the statistical caliber of listed companies).
As of December 2021, the number of China Mobile's cable broadband subscribers was 240.106 million, which is only slightly lower than the sum of China Telecom (169.71 million households) and China Unicom (0.95046 million) cable broadband subscribers; if you only look at the net increase in users in 2021, China Mobile's cumulative net increase in users in that year was 29.785 million, which far exceeded the annual new user addition of China Unicom (8.951 million) and China Telecom (11.18 million).
Of course, in this "counterattack", China Mobile has also encountered no small challenges. Because it belongs to the "latecomer", it cannot be interconnected with Tier1 operators in the early stage, in addition to paying a lot of inter-network settlement fees, it also greatly affects the user experience, and even labels it as "low price and low quality". But with the continuous scale investment, especially the construction of IDC and the gradual introduction of CP content, the once "true and false broadband" dispute has become history forever!
Network quality is always the lifeblood
Network quality is always the lifeblood for operators, and the same is true in the field of wired broadband.
Nowadays, home broadband has become the foundation of smart home and digital life. Li Junwei, director of the Access and Home Network Research Office of China Mobile Communications Research Institute, pointed out that the value of broadband is shifting from the demographic dividend dominated by connectivity to the scenario-based experience dividend, and China Mobile is promoting the collaborative evolution of the next generation of intelligent optical access network + home network around digital services and gigabit experience.
At this stage, China Mobile continues to improve its wired broadband capabilities, and the PON network terminal OLT has fully shifted to 10G GPON deployment, supporting combo mode compatible with GPON. 10G GPON + Gigabit gateway + WiFi6 to achieve "end-to-end Gigabit fixed network" capability.
As the main force of the home broadband business, China Mobile released the home Gigabit optical network solution - all-optical WiFi (FTTR) for the industry in March last year. In order to ensure the landing of FTTR, China Mobile focuses on a set of standards, a platform, a set of tools, and a set of processes "four ones" to support the rapid landing and delivery of FTTR. In addition to FTTR, Wi-Fi 6 is also the focus of China Mobile's efforts in the wired broadband market, relying on FTTR + Wi-Fi 6 to build a family gigabit optical network technology base, support the home network experience value management, and ensure the "three complete and three wisdoms" home information solution (HDICT).
Product Era: Focus on amplifying the value of connectivity
For China Mobile's wired broadband service, connectivity is only the first step, and how to amplify the value of connectivity is the focus of the follow-up.
During the 2021 China Mobile Global Partner Conference, China Mobile released the smart home "HDICT Digital Smart Life +" program, which aims to work with partners to provide users with customizable, end-to-end smart home integrated information solutions and promote the transformation of product forms from a single product to a scenario-based and integrated solution.
In view of the diversification of user needs in the post-epidemic era, the upgrading of smart home industry, and the ecological transformation of smart homes, China Mobile has strengthened the drive of digital infrastructure, accelerated the era of digital life, and provided customers with comprehensive solutions such as smart homes, smart communities, healthy pensions, and digital villages, making smart homes safer and more convenient, and working together with all parties to integrate innovation and realize the closed loop of ecological value.
Under the guidance of the value management concept based on scale, the negative growth of a single month does not explain anything, even if it is a continuous quarter of negative growth, it cannot shake its leading position. China Mobile pursues valuable high-quality growth in the home broadband market, provides users with better network and product experience, enhances ARPU value and profits for itself, and allows hard technology to "soft land" and share a better digital life with users. (C114 Nine-Nine)